“As you can see.”

I spoke to Nam Ban-jang while watching Yeom Dda-wan’s crew.

“They don’t look like they have any intention of surrendering.”

They were just buying time. That’s all that trick was worth.

Nam Ban-jang’s displeasure at my suggestion was because he had already caught on that Yeom Dda-wan was trying to stall with that radio chatter.

A troublesome enemy is troublesome because there are so few chances to bring them down. When the enemy staggers, you have to keep hammering until they collapse.

And right at that crucial moment, I stepped in to side with Yeom Dda-wan—of course Nam Ban-jang was irritated. Nobody understood that better than me.

Back in my Professor days, I would’ve ignored someone like me.

Fortunately, Nam Ban-jang had more flexibility than I ever did back then.

“I’d like to meet him first.”

“Meet him?”

“Yes.”

I nodded and glanced toward Yeom Dda-wan’s side.

He spoke of surrender, but the way he stood tall, staring straight at us, carried not a trace of defeat.

“What’s your plan?”

Nam Ban-jang didn’t look like he intended to oppose me. I didn’t need to explain what had already influenced his judgment—my past achievements. Especially the battle in New Seoul. Even a hardliner like Nam Ban-jang would’ve been affected by that.

I answered plainly.

“The guy himself isn’t the objective.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Jeon Si-hoon.”

I could sense the rising unease in him. A dread heavier than just reasoning it out. And at the end of it all, Kang Han-min would be there. In a way, all of this could be said to have been created by Kang Han-min.

Creating a situation doesn’t always mean actively engineering it. Sometimes it means doing nothing—and letting the outcome fall into place. Like the criminal code’s concept of omission.

Kang Han-min had, in fact, hinted outright that Jeon Si-hoon would drag Seoul, no, the whole country, into ruin.

In the end, it’s Kang Han-min. That soulless machine of a man, willing to see most of humanity annihilated if it meant closing the Rift, stood behind all of this.

When I reached that thought, I realized—me throwing everything away and coming here was only natural. At some point, Kang Han-min had become the counterpoint to my fate.

“...”

But now my mind started to wander. Was Kang Han-min’s method really wrong? His idea did have its own kind of coherence. Shrink humanity to an extreme, to the point that the Rift no longer registers them as a dominant threat. Then, having infiltrated it, he—or some viral effect I couldn’t begin to understand—would erode it from within.

But that “coherence” was the same uncanny coherence I had glimpsed in the Rift itself. The logic fit, but was it really right?

I remembered a man I once saw on TV, an elderly patient with mild dementia, recounting a terrifying dream. He had never once studied pharmacy, never gone to university, never even thought of it. Yet in his dream, in his seventies, he imagined himself a pharmacy student, living out a hazy string of scenes.

A blurry campus, incomprehensible medical texts, faceless classmates, wandering the quad doing something undefined. When he woke, he realized it was all false—he had never gone to such a school. But that realization carried no shock, no surprise. Just a lingering, heavy fog in his head, like a lump that settled only slowly before vanishing into forgetfulness. For quite a while after, though, he lived his daily life believing—naturally—that he was a graduate of that program.

That same eerie coherence was at work in Kang Han-min’s plan.

I cooled my head and thought soberly. Let’s say his plan worked. What then? The collapse of what remains of nations. Death on an unimaginable scale. Civilization itself falling apart. Even if the Rift closed, what could the survivors possibly do? Could humanity, “lucky” enough to survive Kang Han-min’s arbitrary pruning, raise civilization again?

I doubted it.

I remembered Shangri-La’s abused young Awakened, the hollow-eyed crowds at the Tower, the mob of Dies Irae. People like that weren’t going to rebuild anything.

“They say we should come over,” Nam Ban-jang said.

I nodded. “I’ll go alone.”

A flicker of puzzlement crossed his eyes.

“There’s no need for you to shoulder the risk yourself.”

He wouldn’t understand. To him, my reckless move probably looked a lot like the same ominous coherence I just accused Kang Han-min of. But I called it stubbornness.

From the ruins, soldiers’ eyes, gleaming with either drugs or madness, followed me. Women, too, stood inside as if that were only natural. The stench was awful, the sights ones I had no desire to remember. None of that mattered. What mattered was the man I’d come to see.

Jeon Si-hoon’s friend waited for me on the rooftop of the ruined building, back turned, alone.

“You came?”

His name might sound foreign, but his speech was the plain cadence of a man born and raised in Korea. His voice wasn’t good—nasal, stuffy, the kind every school had at least one of. That slight clumsiness made me see Yeom Dda-wan, exotic name or not, as simply another Korean.

He turned.

“Professor. You’re Park Gyu, right?”

I nodded.

“Just as I heard. You’ve got guts, coming alone into what’s basically enemy territory.”

Yeom Dda-wan drew something that gleamed. Two jackknives. He spun them on his fingers with surprising flair. Like a cowboy twirling blades before slipping them into his pocket, he looked at me with a testing expression.

“Tell me, did we ever look like we were really surrendering to those Legion dogs?”

Right after that question, a rough-looking man and a woman closed ranks around him, glaring at me as though part of him. But my eyes were only on Yeom Dda-wan.

“No.”

He snorted.

“Then why’d you come? Don’t tell me you’re here to lecture us, or give us some fucking lesson?”

He pulled something from his coat. A handful of severed tongues. Not just one—several. Brutality like this was hardly shocking anymore, but Yeom Dda-wan clearly thought it made him terrifying.

He rattled the bundle threaded together and growled, “Anyone pulls that shit on me, I cut their tongue out. I’ve done it plenty.”

I said, “I came to ask about Jeon Si-hoon.”

His head tilted. “Si-hoon?”

“Yeah. You’re his friend, right?”

“...”

He fell silent, caught off guard. From the blood-soaked battlefield to me suddenly asking about some third party—no wonder his mind snagged. But it was more than that.

“Why do you want him?”

He had said earlier that he was Jeon Si-hoon’s best friend. Whether it was true or not, I could hear genuine pride in his voice when he said it.

His men stirred. Annoyed by his hesitation, they seemed ready to deal with me. A woman came up the stairs, calling out, “Dda-wan, we’ve finished repositioning. We can start again now.”

Stalling for time, of course. Yeom Dda-wan glared at me. “Wait.”

His attitude only reinforced my conviction. Jeon Si-hoon’s crew wasn’t just a pack of opportunists. They were outcasts bound around him—people who couldn’t fit into the center. I remembered the grotesque, awful scene I’d once glimpsed leaving Seoul. That same tenacious bond.

“What do you want to know?” he demanded.

I answered bluntly. “Has he been called?”

Yeom Dda-wan’s expression shifted. He looked around and ordered, “Everyone, get downstairs.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll talk to this old man for a minute.”

His crew left. Now it was just the two of us on the rooftop.

“Are you just speculating? Or are you sure?” he asked.

I pulled out my phone. While his eyes narrowed, I tapped a recorded file and played it.

“Lately I’ve been dreaming of turning into a monster... really. Fuck... it feels so real. Keeps calling me.”

That was Jeon Si-hoon’s voice, sent to me under Kang Han-min’s ID.

I had no hobby of recording calls, but with Kang Han-min I couldn’t not hit record.

“What is this?” Yeom Dda-wan’s eyes trembled. Just as I thought—the recording was the key.

“You’re saying... Si-hoon told you?”

“I pulled him out near Sejong.”

“...”

One thing was certain now. Yeom Dda-wan wouldn’t harm me. And I still wasn’t done talking.

“I saw Jeong Dae-kyung turned monster in Gyeongju.”

“Jeong Dae-kyung...!”

“I’ve been to the Rift’s deepest core. You wouldn’t believe what I saw there, but Si-hoon saw me go. That’s why he contacted me.”

“...”

“What happened to him?”

Yeom Dda-wan didn’t answer. His fists clenched, his face contorted with conflict he couldn’t resolve.

“Already called? Or...”

“Not completely. Not yet,” he said at last. “Inside the Tower, he’s still giving orders. Don’t know what’s going on, but every Friday, when supplies drop—you know that, right? That’s all under his command. His people don’t move carelessly. They’re more like subordinates than friends.”

Shaking his head, he added with emotion, “I’ve known Si-hoon since the day he came to Jeju. Since before he even grew tall. We’ve been friends that long!”

So there were power struggles even among his peer group. Not my problem. What mattered was the truth he held.

“...He definitely changed. Threw everything away. Even the fight with Sejong—he suddenly ordered it.”

Muttering to himself, Yeom Dda-wan suddenly glared at the air.

“Right.”

His face twisted with fury. “Yeah. That bitch. It all went wrong when she showed up.”

He cursed, spitting venom.

“That bitch ruined everything.”

“Who do you mean?” I asked.

He held his breath, then spat it out. “Yoo Yang-seo!”

“Kang Han-min’s woman?”

He nodded.

“...”

I already knew Kang Han-min’s hand was behind this. That was why I’d come alone into Yeom Dda-wan’s lair despite Nam Ban-jang calling it suicide. I suspected Kang Han-min’s shadow was strong. Now I saw it was even stronger.

“Si-hoon liked her. Weird woman, but pretty enough. Sure, she’s Han-min’s mistress, but what could he do? He was hooked. Even when I tried to set him up [N O V E L I G H T] with someone better, that bastard only looked at her.”

That was something only his “friend” could have known. But one thing was clear: Kang Han-min’s influence—or rather, his follower’s—was deep in Si-hoon’s change.

“...”

I felt a kind of hollowness. Kang Han-min’s certainty wasn’t just certainty—it was little manipulations, petty plots. That wasn’t savior-like. Didn’t fit the image of him I had rebuilt inside me. But it was the truth.

“Is Jeon Si-hoon in the Tower?”

“Yes. Hasn’t stepped outside once.”

Static buzzed in my earpiece. Nam Ban-jang.

“How’s it going?”

He had every right to worry after the delay. And if I didn’t answer, he’d drop chemical shells on us without hesitation. A textbook soldier.

I spoke into the comm, “It’s fine. I’ll contact you later.”

Yeom Dda-wan eyed me suspiciously, so I explained, “If I don’t reply, chemical shells will fall on our heads.”

He nodded grimly.

“So. What now?”

I thought. A few sly ideas wriggled, but none of them would be right. This was his friend’s matter—but also mine.

Looking at the worry etched on his face, I spoke slowly.

“...I have to meet him myself.”

What I left unsaid: I might have to kill him. But that much didn’t need saying. A man who had been through the Rift would understand.

“The Tower is hell,” Yeom Dda-wan said flatly. “Once you go in, you don’t come back out. It’s full of cult-like lunatics, already-called friends... Yoo Yang-seo’s lot, too.”

“Will you help me?”

He hesitated, but not for long.

“...How should I help?”

He was Jeon Si-hoon’s friend.